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In this thread, I said that Jonathan Franzen's The Correctionss was one of the best novels of the decade. Many critics agreed with me, but many other critics disagreed with me. Franzen, as an author, is generally praised. On the other hand, when Franzen puts on his "literary critic" hat, people become polarized. More on this in a second.
Thanks to Jonathan Franzen's penchant for name-dropping, I discovered William Gaddis, author of The Recognitions. I read all of its 956 pages, and I really loved it. I also loved The Corrections. This puts me in an interesting position. More on this in a second.
Franzen wrote an article for The New York Times called "Mr. Difficult" which was about Franzen's growing disillusionment with Gaddis. From this article, I'm going to define the Status model and the Contract model.
Status Model: "the best novels are great works of art, the people who manage to write them deserve extraordinary credit, and if the average reader rejects the work it's because the average reader is a philistine; the value of any novel, even a mediocre one, exists independent of whether people are able to enjoy it... It invites a discourse of genius and art-historical importance".
Contract Model: "a novel represents a compact between the writer and the reader, and the writer providing words out of which the reader creates a pleasurable experience. Writing thus entails a balancing of self-expression and communication within a group, whether the group consists of Finnegan's Wake enthusiasts or fans of Barbara Cartland. [T]he deepest purpose of reading and writing fiction is to sustain a sense of connectedness, to resist existential loneliness; and so a novel deserves a reader's attention only as long as the author sustains the reader's trust. The discourse here is one of pleasure and connection."
In this essay, "Mr. Difficult", Franzen argues that Gaddis is the epitome of the problem with literature. As much as Franzen loves Gaddis, he finds that the novels are too difficult to read, and are therefore not entertaining. Gaddis is unreadable. Franzen implies he is the ideal reader for Gaddis (" 'Hello! I'm the reader you want!...If you can't show me a good time, who else do you think is going to read you?' "). Franzen confesses he did not finish Gaddis' second novel, JR. He writes, "In Status terms, I'd simply failed as a reader. But I did have Contract on my side. I'd given the books weeks of evening reading, it still wasn't working for me, and now I was eager to read shorter, warmer books..." Franzen says that "...the work of reading Gaddis makes me wonder if our brains might even be hard-wired for conventional story-telling, structurally eager to form pictures from sentences as featureless as 'She stood up'." He is essentially worried that if experimental fiction continues, it will be forgotten by the average reader.
In the October 2005 issue of Harper's Magazine, Ben Marcus offers an essay of his own, called "Why Experimental Fiction threatens to destroy publishing, Jonathan Franzen, and life as we know it". (Ben Marcus is an author of a short story collection, a novel, and edited a collection of American short stories). In this essay, Marcus shows that Franzen is the exact problem with literature today, not Gaddis. According to Marcus, Franzen "paints Gaddis as the dark prince of Status, writing obtusely just because he can, and secretly hating his own work". Marcus writes that, "Franzen decides that because he can't enjoy Gaddis then no one cane, and his conclusions all revolve around a bizarre belief that he is somehow the ideal reader for complex, difficult writing, when clearly he is not".
In an online dialogue, Franzen and New Yorker editor Ben Greenman discuss this difficulty. Franzen wrote, "If somebody is thinking of investing fifteen or twenty hours in reading a book of mine - fifteen or twenty hours that could be spent at the movies, or online, or in an extreme-sports environment - the last thing I want to do is punish them with needless difficulty."
Marcus replies to this, writing that "language itself is the difficulty, not just certain kinds of language... He wants literary language to function as modestly as spoken language". Marcus is an experimental novelist. He wants to read Gaddis because Gaddis goes where no other author goes. Marcus wants to test the malleability of language, stretch it as far as one can go. If that means difficulty, then so be it. He states, "I am not advocating the complex or difficult approach as the superior one". Marcus tells us that his readers should have to work, to become "fierce little reading machines, devourers of new syntax."
So what is this debate about? Is difficulty a bad thing in a novel? When difficulty is present in a novel, do critics rely on calling it a Status novel, and thus ignores the popular opinion? What is at stake here?
Should a novel entertain? Is that its foremost purpose? This is an old question. Is a novel high art or low art? Henry James asked it in "The Art of Fiction".
In the above linked thread, alterity posted, "His characterization of William Gaddis, whose novel JR is without a doubt one of the most important American novels of the last fifty years, as 'Mr. Difficult' in order to dismiss him is unconscionable. Difficult does not equal good, but it should not be denigrated as being inimical to the point of writing, a point which becomes prescription for a writer like Franzen. Certain themes and issues are best explored (perhaps) in certain genres or with a certain style. Franzen's exploration of the family in contemporary America works very well in the form/style/genre he has chosen for it: a fairly straightforward melodrama."
alterity then name-drops a whole bunch of authors that should be read in order to better judge Franzen's status as "one of the best". Marcus, in his essay, does the same thing, pointing us in the direction of current experimental authors who deserve some readers. Unfortunately, Marcus believes Franzen propogates a tried and true form, a convention already tested, and he is not doing anything to push forward the evolution of the novel.
I use these people (Franzen, Marcus, Gaddis, James, and alterity) to pose the question: what is the novel's purpose? The reason why I use these people, most notable Franzen, is because he is the current enfant terrible of criticism. He is contemporary, current, and still wields some power, something that Marcus has an intense problem with. But, I wonder, does he have a point? Reading is not the hobby it used to be. People who don't read because of a number of reasons: they do not have the time, they do not have the spare income, and most shocking, some people believe the novel to be frivolous. Therefore, if they are going to invest in a novel, it should be relatively easy. It shouldn't make them upset over missing a thousand references (you, Gaddis). So who's right? Franzen or Marcus? Should fiction work on the Status model, or the Contract model? Or should there be a compromise? |
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